


Flying With Paper Wings

by Falling_into_oblivion



Series: Of Flying and Thunderstorms [1]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Mild Language, POV First Person, Past Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-03-17 20:22:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3542609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falling_into_oblivion/pseuds/Falling_into_oblivion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kaneki's head has always been a mess. His memories and thoughts muddled up in actions and words. He struggles against reality whilst trying to live, and it's tearing him apart. Lucky for him, there are some people who refuse to give him up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flying with Paper Wings

The paper between my fingers was thin, crinkled slightly from water damage, with something that looked like coffee stains- or at least I hope they were coffee stains- on the corners of the pages. It was an old book, some form of horror novel from the 1960s, but it was a distraction. The words were familiar and comforting, as I’d read the book at least twice before, and I slowly settled into a steady rhythm.  
Flip the page, pause, read, repeat. Flip the page, pause, read, repeat.  
It wasn’t only the book that was soothing, but the act in itself. The calm serenity of the continuous actions as well loved words wormed their ways inside my head, painting bright pictures of deadly scenes. There was nothing quite like getting lost in a good book.  
Sometimes, though, reading wasn’t enough. Like now. The memories would come creeping back up to the surface, thoughts that I’d rather remained buried churning through my clouded mind as I thought shit, and not now. Not here, on the roof, where anybody could find me. My thoughts wait for no one though, least of all myself, and they flood the narrowing channels of my mind, filling it to the surface with pain and death and loneliness and oh _God_ , please not now.  
The images don’t stop coming though, and with them the sharp pricks of past pains, like the aches of phantom limbs. I did lose limbs, countless fingers and toes... over and over and over and over and oh _God_ , please let me stop remembering because the blood is everywhere and his face is there and I have to count back. Count back. What’s... a thousand minus... seven? What’s...? Nine hundred... nine hundred ninety three. No, I can’t do this again, _not again_.  
Not again, not again, not again.  
Not when I let people die, not when they lied about getting me out of there. I can’t... I need to stop thinking. Because the small corner of the roof is growing smaller and smaller and there’s no room and I can’t breathe, and oh _God_ , why can’t I _breathe_? I’m outside and there’s oxygen everywhere, so why does it feel like I’m dying?  
I’m shaking now, the small ache growing in my chest as I gasp and cough, swallowing back the excessive amount of saliva pooling on my tongue. Twitching fingers tear at paper, folding it over and over and over to distract myself, and I need to focus on my fingers and the paper before the memories come back again, because I can’t deal with this. I’ve never been able to deal with this.  
Even as a child, when books weren’t enough to distract myself from the loneliness, I couldn’t deal with it. There was no viable method, no quick means to achieve the calm that I longed for, no simple way to switch my thought track back to sane. That was the problem really, as my fingers continued to hastily fold the torn pages, little origami cranes taking shape slowly from the mess. Sanity just seems so far away right now.  
It’s just that I couldn’t escape... not my own head, not these thoughts, not anything. Not the incomprehensible hurt, nor the death and oh God, not the death. Everyone just keeps on leaving, dying, and they can’t... I have to... I have to _protect_ them. So they can’t leave me. So I’m not alone. So I can... so I can... so I can... they can’t just go and _die._  
I hear a dull voice calling out as I fold crane after crane, wondering is there really a God? Because surely he would have done something, anything, to stop all of this from happening if there was. Surely he wouldn’t allow me to sit here falling to pieces as my heart pounds in my ears and I have to remind myself to breathe. Because I can breathe, even though it doesn’t feel like it, and my lungs are working or surely I would be dead by now. Am I dead? Is this death?  
There’s a hand on my arm. I can feel it, the warmth of a palm and the dull murmuring of unheard words, though I can’t see the person they belong to. I can only see the crimson on my fingertips and I think paper cut, but that can’t be true as this body can’t get paper cuts so where... where is the blood coming from? Why is there... blood?  
And the hand is still there, palm still pressing on my skin in its own special way as the unclear words grow louder, almost as though they’re being shouted now. Still, I cannot understand a thing, and my little origami cranes are flying away in the wind and all I can think is are those my thoughts because there is no focus here. No clear thought pattern or logical thinking at all.  
The hand is around my wrist now and I see that the skin is pale. His skin; I’m almost sure it’s a man. He’s pulling me up with that firm grip, and I try to fight against his insistent pulling. I yank my hand back and twist, scraping against skin with bitten fingernails. It’s no use though, my body is uncoordinated whilst I’m in this state of mind and he is strong... stronger than I’d like to admit.  
He’s still talking as he drags me along, down stairways and cold hallways leading to nowhere and everywhere at once, but the words continue to wash over me like he’s the waves and I’m drowning, drowning, drowning. Nothing seems real anymore as the memories slither back to the forefront of my mind, clawing at me whilst my hands are trapped by him, and I can’t escape. There’s no escape.  
I’m dragged into an unfamiliar room but I’m so far lost inside my head that details don’t stick, and I’m not sure whether these are tears on my cheeks or blood. Why would there be blood? It must be tears then, unless I’d been subconsciously scratching at my face. That wasn’t possible now though. Not with his hands around my wrists.  
There were more incoherent words being said and then I found myself in a bathroom, being pushed into a small shower cubicle. It still hadn’t registered who it was that was manhandling me like this, or why he would be there, but I felt rather than heard a small bubble of laughter leave my lips. It all seemed so ludicrous now, what with the glass walls closing in around me and oh, he’d stepped in the shower too.  
I gasped when the first icy cold drop of water landed on my head, and squirmed uncomfortably as more began to fall until they were hammering down steadily around me.  
My eyes watched as the liquid ran down the drain, freezing rivers running their small paths down my back as the endless sound of water hitting plastic rang out. The sound was soothing, a little bit like rain really when it hammers on a thin roof. Or maybe it was more like footsteps, a stampede of people running on and on and on... I didn’t know anymore. I don’t think I ever really knew to start with. I could only pause to throw guesses into the non-existent wind and speculate with what little brainpower I had.  
I froze when arms wrapped around my waist, heat emanating from him as he tugged my body against his, forehead on my shoulder and hair brushing my lips. It was curious really, oddly comforting as my hands went uncertainly to his back, feeling the smooth ridges of his spine through his damp shirt.  
He smelled... like a ghoul. But there was something else to it, something innately familiar that screamed ‘you know this person!’ I’m two halves of different puzzles that refuse to fit together though, and I’m trying- oh please help me I’m trying- but it won’t work and I have to pull myself together. I have to remember his name. I have to know who went through so much effort to help me.  
I lean away slightly, staring through blurry eyes at the now upturned face as a hand went to touch his cheek, thumb tracing his lower lip, because I had to know if my imagination had gone so far as to create people, because this is **_Ayato_**. Ayato _hates_ me. Except that he can’t, not really, not if he’s truly here, and he has to be here because I can feel him. I can feel his hands on my waist and his wet hair on my neck and his face under my hand. It’s real. He’s real.  
“I see you’re back to the land of the living, eyepatch,” And those are his words, though sounding curiously softer than usual. Almost tentative. Almost but not quite because Ayato is never uncertain so it can’t be true. He’s too full of self confidence and arrogance for that, surely.  
“I guess so,” I murmur, relieved to find that I still had a voice. After so long silently screaming I was unsure.  
“You know, I thought you’d truly lost it the-” I cut him off with my lips rather than words, figuring that it would be more effective that way. You could never argue with words when it came to Ayato, as it only saw to making his already foul temper worse. He pressed back against me slightly, fingers fisting my shirt, and I didn’t expect that, but it was nice. A different feeling from the one I had come to expect when you participated in the act of kissing, but not entirely unpleasant. Until he pushed me away roughly, that is.  
“What the- what do you think you’re doing? You... you bastard!” He all but growled at me, flicking the switch to turn off the water system as he slipped past me, brushing against me in the enclosed space as he stumbled out of the cubicle. He glared at me then as though it was my fault he almost tripped, the look full on reproachful as he dripped water onto the bare, tiled floor.  
“Thank you, for before. For waiting it out with me.”  
“I don’t want your thanks,” He sneered, “You think I did it for you? Well I fucking didn’t, okay?” I didn’t say a word, and he seemed to feel the need to continue, “It was a one off, and it will never, _never_ happen again.”  
I only raised an eyebrow at that, and his eyes narrowed further. “Get out. You know what? Just get the hell out. Get out of my bathroom, and then get out of my room. Just go.”  
I stepped out of the shower, his shower, wet clothes rustling as I made my way to the door. I only turned back to say, “I won’t tell anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about,” before leaving. His frustrated growl followed me out of the room though, and I smiled slightly at that. It’s nice to know that some things never change.  
Except things did change. They changed a lot.


	2. Falling With Paper Weights

I dodged a punch, the air rustling my hair as I took a few cautious steps back, raising my arms to block the next hit with my forearms. I grunted at the impact, ignored the blunt pain, and launched an attack of my own. My foot was caught though, and I stumbled once before regaining my balance and spinning away, feet spread apart as I steadied myself once more.  
This was easy. The fight, the hits, the act. An elbow glanced off my shoulder as I ducked under the next blow, and that was easy too. This I was used to, this I could cope with.  
It was the glaring hole in my head that I couldn’t. The deep, jagged edges of missing memories and missing pieces of _myself_. There’s irony in that somewhere, buried deep enough for me not to understand but to _know_.  
Sometimes I could find humour in it, in the fact that I could only remember the last few years, beginning with the time I woke up and decided I was going to become Haise Sasaki. Because playing being Haise Sasaki could be amusing at times, thinking up random puns and trading jokes with the more amiable members of the Quinx Squad.  
It was times like now though, sparring with Arima in an empty meeting room on top of a creaky table, that the humour was lost on me. What could I possibly find funny about being trapped acting like somebody I know I’m not, whilst not being able to remember who I actually am?  
My foot erred as I landed wrong after dodging another swiftly aimed kick to my midsection, and I almost fell off the table but regained myself at the last second and rushed forward, now on the offensive.  
That seemed to be a metaphor for my life lately. Constantly attacking, constantly on the brink, afraid of falling. That was a fear that felt foreign to me, but it was only too real now.  
When I first got out of wherever they were keeping me, I read up a lot about amnesia. I wanted to know what was wrong with me. Every book I read, every website I scrolled through, they all seemed to say the same thing. Amnesia is caused by brain damage, disease, or as a result of psychological trauma. When I went for my next check up I asked them which was my cause. They only smiled and changed the topic.  
What could possibly be so bad that I would suppress my own self though? That was an easy enough question to answer, at times like these.  
You see, there’s a monster living in my head alongside the current me. A monster of my own making, a ghoul, the past me. I try to lock him out, shut him away behind bars and doors and concrete. He’s always there though, demanding control. Demanding freedom and release.  
He’s taunting and cruel and a creature of nightmares. He’s not real but he is, and he’s me but he’s not.  
I didn’t believe it at first, when he only just started to visit me in my head. Murmuring use me and give it back as though it was only natural that I do as he say. I was tempted, at first, but stopped myself. If he took over then who would I be? A lie, easily forgotten or a dream, barely remembered?  
I don’t want to disappear. I don’t want to forget who I’ve been for the last few years, who I am now. Even though there’s a piece of me missing, I would rather it stay lost if it meant I didn’t lose my current self in the process.  
I couldn’t let the other me take over, but I could learn what he knows. A solution, of sorts, to my age old dilemma. Who am I?  
There would be times when I would feel like I’m getting closer. Closer to an answer to the question I’m constantly asking myself. I’d pause in the middle of hallways as the whisper of a time long past called to me, but the brief moment would flicker and fade, floating away just a touch out of reach. Forever just a touch.  
I didn’t see the hit until it was too late, and the air was crushed out of my lungs as I fell back, landing hard on the tiled floor. It was the hit that knocked me back to reality, back out of my head.  
Coughing weakly and clutching my shirt over the place on my chest where his foot had connected, I smiled meekly up at Arima. “Look like you win.”  
“You seemed distracted,” was his response as he pulled me up and looked me over, assessing any possible injuries but ultimately deciding I was fine as his gaze returns to my face. “Why?”  
“I, ugh, didn’t get a lot of sleep,” I shrugged, scratching my chin as I tilted my head, “A lot of paperwork, y’know?”  
“Did you hear “the voice” again?” He caught me on my lie and I winced under his disapproving frown.  
I nodded my head once, curling my fingers through my hair in agitation. “He... he whispers in my ears. I’m pretty sure he’s the past me, and even though I don’t know the me who lived the past 20 years, even though working at the CCG is hard, I think I want to be useful to people.”  
“Come on, let’s wipe the desk.”  
“Okay,” and just like that things returned to normal. I could find the humour again. The other me was forgotten.  
Sometimes, I thought I lived for these spars between us, when I got to think. Other times, I thought they were when my nightmares surfaced into reality. Either way, they got me through the month.

 

It was walking back to the chateau, barely paying attention and swinging my arms idly, that I ran into him. A boy, man, probably only a few years younger than myself. Slim and short with a hood covering his hair and a scowl marring his features.  
The scowl only deepened into a grimace when I knocked into him, and he growled before he saw me properly. It was strange then, because the angry look cleared and he looked... shocked? It was clear he hadn’t expected me, lips parted and eyes wide, pupils blown and hands clenched into fists around the sleeves of his jacket.  
The customary question- do I know you?- was on my lips, but before I had chance to speak he turned and ran.  
It was when his hood slipped and a shock of midnight blue hair flashed in the midst of the crowd as he disappeared that I realised I did know him. Somehow.  
The look stayed with me all through the walk back to the chateau, and then still as I traipsed through the curiously empty house up to my own room, the distant noises of some video game from Saiko’s direction being the only sound.  
I went immediately to my desk, sifting through the yet-to-be-done paperwork as I skilfully manoeuvred myself into the chair even as my hands continued to sort through the mess. It didn’t take long to find it; a thick, hardback notebook bound in black leather. I flicked to the nearest blank page and wrote down my encounter with the boy-man on the street, trying to recall every detail.  
Light blue eyes, almost gray. Probably in his late teens, could be younger because of the short stature. Physically fit, and a rebellious image.  
I paused, looking back through the notes, before deciding on two more points.  
Knows me personally, evident from the surprised reaction. To be labelled as a person of interest.  
If I was to flick through the rest of the notebook, it would be filled with similar entries. The young owner of the :Re coffee shop that I frequented, who dropped the tray she was carrying when she first saw me, or the man who stopped me at the supermarket to ask if I’d seen somebody called Hide lately.  
It was the first page that interested me the most though, and I went back to it now. My fingers brushed over the only two words tarnishing the otherwise blank page, underlined several times so that I didn’t forget the significance of them. It was only a name, but it was a name that I was sure meant a lot to me, as it was the only one that I ever remembered from my past.  
And whoever Ayato Kirishima was, and who he was to me, I was going to find him and find out.


	3. Crushed by Paper Thoughts

It was with a foot crushing me and a person screaming things- things in German, beautiful things, terrifying things- that it all came back. The memories and the weight and the guilt and the horror. They didn’t come back like the trickle of a stream in deep winter, half frozen and half freezing. They slammed back like a freight train with no brakes, rattling out of control, and it _hurt_.

_I was laughing, but the why was lost on me forever. All I knew was the elation, the freedom of the moment, and the boy running ahead of me._  
_“Hide, wait up!” And that was my voice, free of pain and light, floating around me in a multitude of waves. My feet pounding the pavement and the breathes catching in my lungs and the burn, burn, burn of not enough oxygen, not enough air, not enough life, all things that kept me pushing forward, pushing towards him._  
_“You’re too slow, Kaneki.” A laugh, deep and carefree and teasing and all too sweet. “You have to catch me!”_

 I never did catch him. It was hard to separate the pain of that, with the pain of everything else.

 " _I hate you.” Burning words from a burning man, the fire enveloping us both in tension and anger disguised roughly by madness and hate._  
_“No, you don’t.” In another life I wouldn’t have said those words with that self loathing grin. In another life I would have flinched instead of catching the fist aimed at my face. In another life I probably wouldn’t be in a situation like this at all._  
_“Don’t tell me what I feel!” A growl and a body, hard and unforgiving and pressed firmly against my own. Curiously warm and yet overbearingly cold with the pressure of bitterness and annoyance._  
_“Then stop lying to yourself, so I don’t have to.”_

 He always was a liar; Ayato Kirishima. He lied about his feelings and his reasons and his hate. He lied to everyone, and I always did hate it when he lied to me. He knew that, and eventually he stopped. I’m still not entirely sure why.

  _“God, I don’t know why I agreed to this.” A sigh muffled by his mug, heavy with uncertainty. “You sure are a persistent bastard.”_  
_“It gets me what I want,” And my shoulders lifted in a shrug, fingers curled tightly around my own mug, the heat reminding me of a life I once had. Not anymore though, not now._  
_“Selfish asshole,” but there was no spite in his tone. After all, he was only stating what we both already had knowledge of. “What do you want from me?”_  
_“I want to understand you.”_  
_He tilted back on his chair, knuckles white as he gripped the table and his eyes flashing with something... humour, anger, a mix? Maybe he was just lonely too. Maybe he needed someone to push him._  
_“I don’t even understand myself most of the time.”_  
_Or maybe it was just self hatred, in those eyes of his that mirrored my own._

 It was all too much, these unfamiliar feelings crushing me with their familiarity. These weren’t just memories, they were pieces of myself, coming back home after a trip away and slotting themselves back into their allocated spots, as though they were always there to begin with, as though they always knew they were going to be coming back home. They can’t have though and the pain was splitting me apart. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could hold myself together.

  _“Aren’t you afraid?” He rolled over to look at me, resting his head on crossed arms and rubbing his foot against my own, craving some small piece of contact no matter what form it came in._  
_“Of what?” My smile was gentle, foreign and warm as I brushed a few strands of damp hair back from his forehead. Moments like this, peaceful and quiet and relaxed, were so hard to come by these days._  
_“Death.” He caught my hand before I could completely pull it back, pressed his lips to the back of it as he linked our fingers together._  
_“No.”_  
_“How?” It was times like these that he showed his vulnerability, that he didn’t cover it up with sarcasm and false anger._  
_“Because it’s better to be the one that hurts.”_  
_“That’s bullshit, Kaneki. You’re bullshit.”_  
_“I know.”_

 How long had it been? An hour, two? Or mere minutes mixing with seconds playing at days? Who knows anymore? Oh God, who knew to begin with?  
After all, isn’t time a human concept? Made up for comfort and to bind people to life, but I’m not bound now. I’m free and living a multitude of forevers in seconds and it might be killing me.  
And I don’t care.  
I can’t articulate enough how much I don’t care, how much I crave the knife slicing the ribbon binding my soul to my body, and isn’t it already coming undone? Am I coming undone?  
It feels like it with the taste of honey on my lips and blood on my tongue, and the pain is scattered fragments pulling at my body and my head and my brain.  
How much pain can I take before my body simply gives in and I fall to sleep? Too much, too much, too much. Isn’t death nothing but sleep and sweet dreams anyway? Isn’t it salvation? Is it salvation that I crave so much?  
No!  
No more sleeping or waking or sweet dreams. I have to wake up, snap back, stop thinking. I have to escape the memories bombarding me and the foot crushing me and the blood drowning me.  
An arm... in my grasp... not attached. Did I... is this real? Words falling from my lips like spun sugar dripping dripping dripping, but are they my words? There are people here with me, messy people with messy lives and lies and... do I kill them?  
I am not in control, but was I ever?  
The question rattles around as my body moves and there’s pieces of me, extensions of limbs scattered and writhing, and blood (more than just my own) coating and soaking inside my skin. Crawling and sprawling, and how much can I take in before I’m not me anymore? Am I even still me now? Who I am?  
Who is this monster that I call me?  
Movement. More movement of bodies and mouths, my own and others, and it’s difficult to distinguish because it all just melds so beautifully in my head. There is nothing beautiful about this.  
“Why’d you even come here? To destroy? To pass the time? To interfere?” This is me, my voice giving sound to these words, but who am I taking to? Is it to her, the Owl, Eto? Or to me? Either one, either one and I’m falling, because the words can so clearly be directed at myself and I don’t know why I came here really, except that it was a crushing mistake.  
She answers anyway and it’s taunting, and she’s calling me sweet but it’s only teasing. Things I’ve heard before but breathed from different lips, things I’ve heard before but tainted by her mouth and her lies.  
Glass shatters and there’s teeth chasing me, bright and white and deadly. Until it’s not teeth, but it’s her and she’s smiling and I’m caught.  
Until I’m not, and she’s spinning away with her last words swirling around me. “I love you.”  
It’s easy after that to say “Thank you,” but easier still to murmur, “No, you don’t.”  
I want to drift away then but I still have work to do. More things to be spoken and things to be heard and bodies to be dealt with.  
More importantly though, there was a new purpose for me. A person I had to find, a person who’d been haunting me for a while now. A person who deserved my explanations, and who I wanted to give them to.  
A person who I wanted to say goodbye to.  
But first comes the task at hand and the CCG. The bodies to be dealt with and the lies to be told and heard.  
I wasn’t crying when I let Tsukiyama’s body fall, but the blood trickling from my hair felt like tears and I welcomed that.  
What is left for a broken man but blood and death, after all?


	4. Caught by a Paper Man

I’d spent too much time loitering in the hallways, trying to listen out for distant voices that never appeared, and now time was running out. The door swung inwards at my touch, the mechanical locks clicking, counting down my time left and tormenting. Movement, blurry in the corner and shrouded in filthy rags. Hinami. She was _here_.  
She was here, just as I knew she would be, and yet still it felt so different _seeing_. I’d been avoiding her, avoiding this place for so long now, and the time bomb was ticking louder and louder in my ears and we had to get out, out, out.  
Out before the alarm was raised in a deafening screech of noise and out before the people closed in on us with their warm bodies and blood and beating hearts.  
“Onii-chan? Why did you come here?” Tentative steps, dainty and light and approaching me, causing me to backtrack through the doorway and out into the hall because what do I say to her?  
To the little girl I failed to protect and grew into a fine young woman whilst I was too busy drowning in my own head to notice, to _care_.  
She is charmed and charming, bright and sweet and all too willing to give me undeserving forgiveness, but also twisted and hungry and aching and lonely.  
I see myself in too many people these days.  
That’s when reality snaps back with the sting of a palm and the shape of small fingers digging into my cheek.  
The gasp came involuntarily, but the shock was real, if not the brief pain. Charmed and charming for sure, maybe, but she was also dangerous and cracking, something bubbling beneath the surface and spilling over the edges and burning bright, too bright.  
“Hina-chan,” If she heard the unsteady lilt to my tone she was steadfastly ignoring it, and I silently thanked her for that small gift, however unintended it may have been. “We need to go.”  
She nodded, setting her jaw in a gesture so familiar, so full of self-assuredness, that I almost lost myself right then and there whilst she was tucking a strand of limp hair behind her ear.  
She made the perfect shadow as we walked down the hall, mimicking me so well as she trailed behind, fingers clutching tightly at the back of my suit jacket, knuckles bumping against my back with every step that fell out of turn.  
Curious, so curious how she would trust me so easily still, even after all of this. How she would still cling to me like the little girl that she left behind so long ago, left behind when _I_ left _her_ , abandoning her to this cruel world.  
Because that’s what I did. I left her to fend for herself and live her own way, and live she did. She fought and crawled her way up through the Aogiri ranks, battling to stay ahead of the storming droves of ghouls, humans, doves. Death bringers and hateful, deceitful things.  
All so she could find me.  
And now that she had found me? Well, neither of us knew quite what to say. Though what can we say now, that doesn’t sound insincere or selfish? Apologising would just make us both ache with anger and anything else would be insignificant.  
So we didn’t talk. We didn’t talk as we wound through empty doorways and hallways, stopping steady to listen to small sounds, the creak of ancient walls and whispers of something behind closed, locked doors.  
Eto was somewhere behind one of those doors.  
If I listened closely, hand wrapped around a tiny wrist not as fragile as it seemed, I could almost hear the wind blowing, rushing through this prison, hell, establishment like such things as peace and quiet meant nothing to it. As though the only words the wind knew were calamity and destruction.  
Sometimes I felt like I was like the wind. Most of the time I felt like I was the thing being destroyed.  
That was crazy though, there was no wind here. No wind to fill these decaying halls with its cool breath and taunting fingers brushing the napes of necks. No wind to distract and clear my head, to pull me back to the present and the here and now.  
Where am I?  
_Oh_ , that’s right. I’m trapped within the rotting concrete walls of Cochlea, running for her life more than mine, scared for her life but never my own. I’m _trapped_ , and that wasn’t wind I could hear at all. Not wind, but voices. _Voices_.  
It’s as we round the corner that Furuta comes into view, his cat got the canary grin bright as he says, “Associate special class, whatever are you doing here?” as though he didn't already know.  
He does know though, is the first coherent thought that comes after all the confused tumbling flutters of my mind trying to piece together what I’m hearing and seeing right in front of me. He knows what I’m doing and who I am and why I’m getting Hinami out of here. He probably always knew, even as he helped me capture Eto. Even as he stood by my side and supported me.  
He’s still rambling, about positions and necessity, as if those things actually meant anything to either of us, calling me his little baby boss as if it’s the sweetest kind of endearment rolling off his tongue even as he makes the first move, diving towards me.  
It’s easy then, to not listen to the words still falling from his lip, just like autumn leaves swirling in the air as I let my body move by itself, completely instinctual, relying wholly on muscle memory as the rest of me calculates how to quickly end this fight without getting too badly injured.  
Furuta’s annoyingly good at what he does, still wearing that infernal grin even as I’m causing him to fall back and he’s losing the advantage that mainly consisted of my surprise anyway. This is still taking far too long though, and he’s too used to the way I fight for it to be easy.  
Still, if I just get the timing right, then maybe... maybe... I’d miscalculated and damn, when did he get regeneration... that’s not... oh...  
Hinami. I’d forgotten all about her in the mindlessness of the fight and she’s... rinkaku, of course, how could I have forgotten. She’s made it in Aogiri all these years, of course she isn’t the girl I left behind, in need of protecting.  
It’s still difficult to associate her with the sound of splitting flesh and blood dripping and the gurgle of it building up in Furuta’s throat though, knowing she did that to him. Knowing that she didn’t need me to protect her anymore.  
“Let’s go,” Her voice trembles, hands knotting in the front of her dress, but all I can do is nod and lead the way. She no longer clings to the back of my jacket, hovering just behind me as she tries to sync our steps, but perhaps it’s easier this way. I didn’t need one more person to say goodbye to.  
There’s noises further down the hall that come apparent as we travel, rushing now. Hinami doesn’t question why I’m running just as I don’t question the tears still trickling steadily down her cheeks, and we’re flat out sprinting by then, following the grunts and roars of the fight ongoing.  
I’m leaving her behind but she still follows even as she’s falling, and I feel the release of my kagune without really comprehending what that means, the sharp tang of fear and blood in the air drawing me closer, closer, _closer_.  
When I happen upon the fight, I will find them alive. The sentence keeps repeating like a bad joke in my head, the only hope that I have left to cling to because I smell them, their distinct scents unmistakable. Ayato and Touka and Renji and Banjou... more. They were fighting and it was _their_ fear and blood I could practically taste on my tongue. _Their_ lives that hung in the balance.  
When I happen upon the fight, I will find them alive. When I happen upon the fight, I will find them alive. When I happen upon the fight, I will find them alive.  
I will find them alive.  
They are alive.  
Alive and maybe dying and maybe hurt, but still alive. Alive and maybe bleeding and maybe breathing a little bit too hard, but still alive.  
Renji is in the most danger, so I moved to him first, landing in front of him easily and blocking the crackling blow from Narukami. Touka’s gasp is loud in my ears but I only have eyes for Arima, determined not to look behind me where I know Ayato stands.  
“Ayato, lowermost drainage channel, right?” I don’t trust myself not to waver so I yelled the words even as I dodged the incoming blow from IXA, Narukami having been tossed aside like a discarded toy, not the lethal quinque that it was. “Take care of them.”  
The ‘for me’ goes unspoken, and still I can’t bear to look at him, to see the twist of anger on his features and have that be my last memory of him. I want to remember him smiling and breathless, not bleeding and tormented.  
“I’ll see you later then, Kaneki,” It’s Touka’s voice I hear, the others having already moved off as she lingers by the doorway.  
“That’s not fair...” I winced, but she leaves before I can say anything more and then it’s just me facing Arima, the room too big and empty. She always was a cruel one, making me second guess myself like that.  
He’s silent as he faces me, expression neutral. I could almost pretend we were just training, but his tightening grip on IXA and the heavy swish of my kagune reminds me that this is real, the itch in my left eye and ache in my lower back reminding me that I have no choice.  
It starts off like a dance, dangerous and deadly and _intoxicating_. Just one long stream of movement, pain, movement, the glancing shock of connection, movement. Always moving, sliding in and out of range, in and out of _life_.  
I’m losing myself in the dance, too focused on the small opening I know will come. The right side, the right side, the right... oh...  
Fire, burning and spreading like a storm, legs no longer there but it’s the opening of his mouth and the spilling of letters, sentences from his lips that has me backing away, clawing at the ground with fingertips.  
“Six hundred and forty five times. Six hundred and forty five. Six hundred and forty five times I could have fatally wounded you, six hundred and forty five times I decided not to,” He seems slightly bemused by that, “It would take me two seconds to kill you. Your eyes are the eyes of a dead man... the dead cannot stop me.”  
And he knew, just like Furuta knew... just like Ayato had only just began figuring out. Perhaps, just like Furuta, he’d known all along, but it hits deeper as he takes measured steps forward even as I’m still dragging myself away on shaking arms, towards where my legs lay, not attached to my body. In another life that would have made me sick, eyes rolling back in abject horror, but I’ve seen enough gore to be unaffected by now, even the blood and bone of my own body desensitised by my mind.  
“What have you chosen?” IXA is unnerving, still so close to me as he speaks. There’s an itch in my body though, like the one so long ago, the drawing of RC cells and something else, power gathering. Maybe... maybe... “Me? After killing you, I need but a few minutes to hunt down and slaughter the other ghouls from earlier, and I promise you that I will. That is what I have chosen. What have you chosen?”  
He’s riling me up on purpose. I knew this and yet it was working, and the dizzying madness is like a long forgotten dream rushing back all at once, the odd sense of familiarity working through me as I allowed the anger to settle into my very bones, knitting myself back together with rage. “I... I will... stop you here Arima, and...”  
He says something that sounds like incorrigible but it’s too late, and I let myself sink into the sea of nothing, the madness turning to power as I haul myself onto hands and knees, back arching as I try to settle into the new rhythm of my body.  
Arima’s only a blur now, eyesight going shaky, fading in and out, but everything sounds so loud and bright that it’s easy enough to still hear what he’s saying. “Started getting serious now, have we? This quinque was made from a kakuhou I ripped out of a ghoul when I was nineteen. You’re the first person I’ve ever used it on.”  
I’m shaking as I’m standing and yet still I’m up, not quite on feet but on something made of me, still slightly unsteady but more prepared than earlier, and he actually _gave_ me time to prepare. He was being unnecessarily slow about things in that curious way of his, dragging out the inevitable, almost like he... almost like he didn’t _want_ to fight me.  
“Let us begin, Ken Kaneki.”  
Or maybe he does, and I’m just insane.  
His new quinque is strong though, almost like an extension of himself that he wields with precision, and it’s getting harder to dodge, even the air no longer safe, and who’s even heard of remote activation and _oh_... maybe _now_ it’s time for me to...  
A stinging pain, something vile pooling on my tongue and the stench of the blood drip, drip, dripping down my cheeks. All this flesh and blood, all my blood soaking and covering and infiltrating the tattered remains of the clothing I wore, even the very floor we fought on.  
There isn’t enough though, not enough flesh and blood and I can’t move, can’t regenerate can’t do _anything_.  
Can’t dodge, can’t fight, can’t _think_... can’t... dodge... thoughts... wait?  
At least nobody can say I didn’t try, right? As I lay drowning in my own blood and mind, flowers, sweet and terrible and _red_ flowers, blooming all around and beneath me.  
And wouldn’t it be nice to drift off here, in this bed of blossoms?  
Touka, Hinami, they should all be safe now, far away from the confining walls of Cochlea. Ayato too, though I shouldn’t be worried about him and all his strength and abundant pride. Egotism, I once mistakenly called it, but not anymore.  
“Oi! Not yet!”  
And surely this must be how I fall apart, because wasn’t that Hide’s voice calling out to me?  
He’s just such an enigma. Something that you could never understand completely, no matter how hard you tried, no matter how hard you pushed the shattering limits of your brain in an attempt to decipher the code that makes him up.  
The lines colouring the darkening roots of his hair and the vibrant mess he likes to jokingly call a fashion sense and the curling words hat rolled off his tongue, dripping with honey and oddly empathetic.  
He is a plethora of contradictions, outgoing yet shy, determined yet with an almost mercurial temperament, switching so fast between interests it was hard to keep up. He always did used to say that he would never get bored of me though.  
It makes him who he is, bright and enthusiastic, willful and radiant. Something that could not be ignored, someone that didn’t want to be ignored, and yet a person willing to support from the shadows.  
I could never ignore him. Not when we were younger, or when we had reached the early stages of adulthood, awkward and clumsy in our new shoes as we traipsed our way through university gates that seemed all to intimidating, at least to me.  
I couldn’t even ignore him after the accident, and of course now that he lives within me? He was never going to leave me alone. I could feel him with every spasm of my little finger, a nervous twitch he had thought I didn’t know about.  
And that was the thing, wasn’t it?  
He never know or fully understood that I watched him almost as much as he did me. That I knew about the habits and the preferences and the things that he did at night when he thought that nobody was watching, thought that _I_ wasn’t watching because I was supposed to be asleep in his bed that we so rarely shared, but did on nights like those.  
Nights when I craved escape and his mother would welcome me into their home. Nights when his fingers would creep up my shirt, forming a warm fist just over my heart. Nights when his cool breath hitting the back of my neck lulled me to sleep, the tickle of a nose just barely scraping skin, not enough to make me shiver but enough to make me want to, just to see what he’d do. Nights when would save me from the nightmares.  
He didn’t know I knew just as much about him, and doesn’t that just scream out something dangerous? Something wrong and insidious lurking beneath the surface of our entire relationship.  
How can he not understand how much me he meant to me? _Means_ to me. How can he not understand that he was the only thing ensuring that I clung to the wretched thing humanity called life.  
Because life is wretched, a filthy,ugly thing mimicking humans themselves, wrought with anger and despair and an aching hurt wrapping up old wounds festering with infections. Life is perhaps the worst disease of all, robbing us of everything and then sending us off to our graves, either too soon or not soon _enough_.  
But now Hide was standing, smile all too sincere and hand all too real on my arm, cupping my elbow.  
Fake, fake, _fake_ , this isn’t real. It’s all in my head, and yet isn’t everything these days?  
What’s so different now, when everything feels so right?  
“Put some clothes on. Now’s not the time to be naked, right?”  
So, _so_ right as somehow clothing just seems to materialise and we sit on blocks of the nothingness I’d previously been falling into, knees touching and hunched backs, sat just like we used to before, when things were easy.  
“I suppose you’re gonna tell me that you’ve done enough and your duty’s done, right?” His hand supported his chin, eyes rolling and tone laced with boredom. “I thought you’d know better by now.”  
“They’ll have made it out by now,” I’m trying to convince myself more than him, but isn’t that just the same thing? Isn’t he just a mere fragment of myself now? Just one tiny part in the many personality-beings that made me up?  
“You haven’t changed a bit,” The fondness though, that was all Hide, something I’m sure I couldn’t replicate, reassuring me more than his words could. “Your hand still strays,” he caught my chin, lifted my head up so my eyes drifted up form my lap, focusing all on him, “When you tell a lie.”  
“I can’t win down there.” The truth then, as I fought down the urge to shift away from that hand holding me still, uncomfortable in the weight of a gaze that I hadn’t felt in years, in a touch that I hadn’t felt since that night.  
“Are you kidding me?” A grin and he dropped that hand, sensing and understanding all at once, “You’re all freaking muscle. Where’s all that skin and bones I used to cuddle with ran off to?”  
The laughter was forced but if fell form my lips anyway, harsh and tinny in the overwhelming silence that threatened to deafen when neither of us were speaking. It soon died away.  
“Hide?”  
“Hm?”  
“You know I... I’m still so _lonely_ without you here...”  
The tears were sudden but not altogether unexpected, a welcome reprieve from ages spent in dryness, the burning sting threatening to overcome everything, trembling hands unable to stop.  
Wordlessly he wrapped his arms around me, having to kneel over me with his shoulder pressing awkwardly into my ear as he pressed kisses to my hair.  
“I’m still with you,” he sat back when the tears died down into shuddering sighs that shook my shoulders, “And you built this whole life all by yourself, without me.”  
He continued even though I shook my head for him not to, pressing,” You have someone to live for too, don’t you?”  
“ _Hide_...”  
“You might not be an easy one to love, Ken. You aren’t easy, but you are worth it. You’re worth so much more than you think,” He pauses, swallows, and his words hang heavy in the air between us, stifling, “He knows that too. Go back to him, Ken. It may hurt but please, for all of us, go back to him and _live_.”  
Live.  
The word was a beacon, a ray of something. What? Hope? Certainty? Love is the word I eventually settle on, letting it reverberate through me as the prickle of my skin knitting itself back together itched and tickled, sending spindly fibres crawling up my spine  full of unease and discomfort.  
It was what I was used to though, this curious little prickling ache. It meant I was healing. It meant I was ready.  
For the first time in a long time, I let a genuine smile curl my lips upwards. There were no words left to say between Arima and I, and I knew from his answering smile that he was done talking as well.  
Black and blue, forever turning and overturning the things I’d chosen countless times. Forever repeating the same actions... endlessly useless. Ungainly. Awkward. Indecisive. Weak. I was the people I wanted to meet, the things I wanted to be told. It was only at death’s door that I finally stumbled upon the twisted truth. Rize, Hide, they’d always... at the end of the day, it’s all within me, all an extension of myself. Hide’ll stop me. As soon as I began to think that, in some part of me I began wishing for it. Wishing that I’d live.  
I will live, I’ll make sure of it. From now on, from now...

 

It was a few days later that I found them, Ayato and the rest, and I didn’t know what to expect. Anger, probably, all consuming and raging, and perhaps relief too, mixed up in all of that disbelieving hurt.  
The words that actually fell from his lips, thought not altogether anticipated, were still enough to make me glad that I’d come back, even if they weren't necessarily nice.  
“I thought you were dead. We all did.”  
“So did I, for a while,” I smiled, tilted my head in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture. He hated that, clenched his fists by his sides in a show of familiar irritation. There was still the whole floor of the warehouse between us though, a lingering scent of illness in the air. “Someone reminded me that I had things to live for though.”  
“So you killed him? Arima?” It’s matter of fact, a statement more than the question it was posed as.  
I graced him with an answer anyway. “Yes.”  
Silence, thick and heavy, but then he finally let the question drop, the one thing we’d both been thinking. “So what are you going to do now?”  
“I don’t know,” I disappoint us both, scratching my neck in discomfort, trying to ignore the heavy weight of my still bloodstained clothes dragging me down, down, down... “Haise Sasaki is... gone. Dead, I suppose, in a way.”  
He laughs then, the sound so bright in this dismal building that it’s shocking, snapping me immediately to attention. “ _Fuck_ Kaneki, why didn’t you say so earlier? I mean, it’s not as though it’s _obvious_ or anything.” Sarcasm, somehow managing to coat every syllable he spits out between spiels of laughter. He soon quiets down though, after what I say next.  
“I killed the only other people I’ve ever loved, in one way or another.”  
Completely silent now, and he doesn’t ask because he already knows _who_. Knows the guilt that weighs me down just as much as the blood. “And I don’t want to kill you too.”  
He’s rushing towards me then, the space between us quickly devoured by angry footsteps, furious as he curled his fingers into my shirt, dragged me even closer as he hissed sentences at me as though his lips weren’t mere centimetres away from my own, as if this wasn’t the closest we had been for four years.  
“You aren’t going to kill me, asshole. Nobody gets to decide when I die but _me_ , and you should remember that, you damn coward.”  
“I suppose I am, aren’t I? A coward, I mean,” and I’m smiling even as he’s glaring at me, height difference no longer what it once was, “Will you take me with you then?”  
“Where?” He deflates, fingers dropping away as he took a few unsteady steps back.  
“Anywhere,” He flinched when I stepped forward, closing the distance between us once more, “Wherever you want to go.”  
“How long?” He choked on his words, swallowing hard and looking too close to tears for comfort. “How long would it be before you disappeared again?”  
“I, I _don’t_...” A tear slipped down my own cheek, curiously warm. I can’t remember the last time I cried actual tears outside of a dream. “Ayato, I don’t plan on disappearing anymore. I want to be with you.”  
“Forever then,” and then there was no space between us and we were breathing each other’s air, fingers clutching at strands of dirty hair and tugging just to feel the pull, feel the ache, “I’m never letting you go again.”  
“Promise?”  
He sighed, checking over his shoulder when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. It must be Hinami and the rest, returning from wherever they disappeared off to as soon as I arrived, leaving Ayato and I alone to 'sort things out.' “I promise, you damn bastard,” he turned back to me, pressed his lips quickly to mine even as the abrasive tones of Touka calling, “You two pansies sorted then?” filled the air around us.  
It’s easy to smile when Ayato flipped her the bird in return and tugged me closer, leaning up to press against me more firmly. It’s easier still to curl an arm around his waist, the other hooking around the back of his knees, and lift him up bridal style so I didn’t have to stop kissing him even as I walked us over to where they waited by the entrance, laughing when he pulled away to hit me over the back of the head before yanking me back to him by my hair.  
Hide, I thought, directing it to that small part of my mind that I kept around just for him, I think I’ve finally come home.


End file.
